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The IDN ccPDP WG 1 reports on the draft policy recommendations for the selection of IDN ccTLDs associated with the territories listed in the ISO 3166-1 (IDN ccTLDs) within the framework of the IDN country code Policy Development Process.

Current Status:

The IDN ccPDP WG 1 seeks public comment on its draft recommendations as part of the ccNSO IDN policy development process.

Next Steps:

The WG will closely review all submitted comments to determine at its reasonable discretion to modify its recommendations. According to Annex C of the ICANN Bylaws and its charter the WG is not obligated to include all comments made during the comment period, nor is it obligated to include all comments submitted by any one individual or organization.

The Working expects to formally publish its Final Report by the end of this calendar year (2012) , and submit this to the IDN ccPDP Issue Manager.

After adoption and implementation the overall policy for the selection of IDN ccTLD strings is intended to replace the current Fast Track Process rules.

The IDN ccPDP WG 1 agreed that the starting point for the overall policy should be the criteria and processes of the Fast Track Process and the recommendations should take into account 3 years of experience with and the two reviews of the Fast Track Process.

The overall policy is limited to the selection of IDN ccTLD strings. Until the introduction of IDN ccTLDs under the Fast Track Process, ccTLD strings were limited to the two letter codes obtained from the ISO 3166-1 list designating the Territory. As this mechanism could not be used for the selection of IDN ccTLD strings, an alternative method was developed was introduced which is commonly referred to as the Fast Track Process.

As under the Fast Track Process the delegation of IDN ccTLDs shall be in accordance with the delegation process of (ASCII) ccTLDs. Thus the recommendations contained in the report build on and are complementary to the delegation, re-delegation and retirement processes applicable to all ccTLDs. This means that once the selection process of an IDN ccTLD string has been successfully completed, the policy, procedures and practices for the delegation, re-delegation and retirement of ccTLDs apply. This also implies that any suggestion to change the policy for the delegation, redelegation and retirement of ccTLDs is out of scope of the IDN ccPDP.

The recommendations describe (at a high level) the decisions and requirements, activities, roles, and responsibilities of the actors involved in the processes. It is anticipated that further detail may need to be added by ICANN staff as a matter of implementation and it is recommended that the ccNSO reviews and approves the final planning document, prior to implementation.

In the report the overarching principles (Section 2) and the criteria and requirements (Section 3) for the selection of the IDN ccTLD string are presented first. The purpose of the overarching principles is to set the parameters within which the policy recommendations have been developed, and should be interpreted and implemented. The processes, procedures and required documentation are described in section 4. Finally in Section 5 (Miscellaneous) general recommendations, such as the review of the policy, are proposed.

In each of the sections 2, 3, 4 and 5 the recommendations are listed first. If considered useful informative notes and comments are included. These notes and comments are not part of the recommendations themselves, but are included to provide depth and colour to the recommendation.

Section II: Background

For the Fast Track Process the criteria and requirements for selection of the IDN ccTLD string as well as the process elements were described throughout both the IDNC WG Final Report and the Final Implementation Plan. The WG agreed to present the criteria and requirements for the selection of IDN ccTLD strings separately from processes, procedures and documentation.

In meeting its purpose, the WG focused on, without limitation, the proposals and recommendations of the IDNC Working Group and the Implementation Plan based on the work of the IDNC WG, and has taken into account the experiences under and reviews of the IDNccTLD Fast Track Process.

As this WG will undertake its activities within the framework of the IDN ccPDP, the limitations on the scope of a ccPDP, in particular by Article IX of and Annex C to the Bylaws, shall limit the scope of the WG's work in a similar manner.

If issues outside this scope become apparent to the WG, the Chair of the WG should inform the ccNSO Council of the issue so that it can be taken into account and dealt with more appropriately. As a result the chair of the WG has informed the ccNSO Council of the issues pertaining to the use of country and territory names in ASCII as TLDs. The ccNSO Council has established a Study Group to look into this matter.

(*) Comments submitted after the posted Close Date/Time are not guaranteed to be considered in any final summary, analysis, reporting, or decision-making that takes place once this period lapses.

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Domain Name System

Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."